340 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



believe that a greater number really exists. No fossils belonging to 

 this class appear to have been found at Petherwin or Barnstaple ; 

 nor are any of the species known to belong to the Silurian or Carboni- 

 ferous series. Polished sections frequently show these organisms 

 surrounding foreign bodies, in most cases corals. 



in 1843, Mr. Peach brought certain fossils, which Mr. Couch had 

 then recently discovered in slate-rocks near Polperro in Cornwall, 

 before the Geological section of the British Association, during its 

 meeting at Cork. They were pronounced to be ichthyolites ; and 

 this, perhaps, the more readily from the fact that whilst the con- 

 temporary rocks of Scotland had yielded fossil-fish in great numbers. 

 ~No more than, if so much as, the faintest trace of organisms of this 

 class had been found in Devonshire and Cornwall ; and this without 

 the appearance of any reason for such absence. 



Mr. Peach traced these fossils from near Fowey harbour to Xalland 

 sands, about two miles west of Looe. Subsequently they have been 

 found, at by no means wide intervals, along the entire coast of Corn- 

 wall from Talland sands to Rame Head, near Plymouth sound. They 

 have also been met with, but in small quantities, at Cliff on the left 

 bank of the river Fowey, at Bedruthen on the north coast of Corn- 

 wall, and at Mudstone Bay, near Brixham, in South Devon. 



Specimens were sent to the late Mr. Hugh Miller, who, at first 

 inclined to confirm their ichthyic claims, — stating, indeed, of one 

 specimen, that If he had found it in the Lower Old Red Sandstone 

 of Cromarty, he would have no hesitation in regarding it as a frag- 

 ment of some dermal plate of Asterolepis ;" but on receiving a larger 

 and more complete series, he prepared a paper on them, which was 

 read before the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh, in which he 

 " doubted whether their true place in the scale of being had been 

 determined," and pronounced them " the most puzzling things he 

 had ever seen ; riddles on which to exercise the ingenuity of the 

 palaeontologist." Soon afterwards Professor McCoy and Mr. Carter 

 subjected them to a close microscopic scrutiny, which resulted in the 

 fossils being pronounced to be sponges merely. A new genus, 

 Steganodictyum, was established for their reception, of which they 

 were found to constitute two species, 8. comubicum and 8. Garteri. 

 These fossils are found in slate-rocks only. 



The remarkable fossil formerly known as Sphceronites tesselatus, 

 has also experienced a variety of fortune among systematists. 

 Rumour says it has been assigned to Insecta. In a note to Sir R. 

 T. De la Beche's paper on " The Geology of Tor and Babbacombe 

 Bays," the late Mr. Broderip says " It is not impossible that the 

 fossil here referred to may have belonged to the Tunicata * Professor 

 Phillips, after Mr. Austen, placed it, provisionally, amongst the 

 Sphoeronitcs, a genus of the family CystideaB, belonging to the 

 Cystoidea, an extinct order of Echinodermata, Sir R. I. Murchison, 

 more recently, says, " It is not, however, a Cystideau, that family 



* Trans. Geol. Soc, 2nd series, vol. iii., part 1st, p. 164. 



